


it's the end of the world as we know it (and i feel fine)

by monstermash



Series: memento mori (remember, you will die) [5]
Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-05-08 05:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14687442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monstermash/pseuds/monstermash
Summary: Really, they should’ve seen this coming – anticipated it even – but they’d gotten so used to fighting larger than life monsters andwinningthat they got complacent.Perhaps they couldn’t have known which Jaeger team would get the short end of the stick, but they could’ve prepared, could’veplanned—The point is, Jacob Seed is bitter and angry at everyone, but mostly at himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: this is unlikely to be finished, though i might come back to this at a later date. sorry.
> 
> i've got 99 problems and all of them are writing au's while having a bad bout of insomnia
> 
> but yeah, a pacrim au because why not? i was watching pacific rim again and during the intro i was like "what if this but with far cry 5 characters?" (i'm still working on my other fc5 fics. i'm about halfway done w/ john's chapter for the timeloop fic)
> 
> also i changed some of the ages in this fic just to make a bit more sense/work better, so a lot of the age differences are smaller. i'll probably give definitive ages next chapter since this one is p short
> 
> Jaegers:  
> Brawler Sierra - Jacob Seed and Miller  
> Havoc Horizon - Garrett Rook and Billy Fairgrave

Really, they should’ve seen this coming – anticipated it even – but they’d gotten so used to fighting larger than life monsters and _winning_ that they got complacent.

Perhaps they couldn’t have known which Jaeger team would get the short end of the stick, but they could’ve prepared, could’ve _planned—_

The point is, Jacob Seed is bitter and angry at everyone, but mostly at himself.

\---

The Kaiju Alarm goes off at 3:17AM and _dear god_ is it fucking cold in the Shatterdome.

“Gotta get a thicker skin, Seed.” Miller shakes him awake, unfairly chipper for this early in the morning.

“Fuck off, Miller,” Jacob grumbles but swings himself down from the top bunk.

“Here,” Miller says, handing over a leftover burrito. “You’re gonna need it; heard this one is going to be _huge._ Looking at about a two hour fight, minimum.”

Jacob follows Miller out of their shared bunk and towards the hangar to get suited up.

“What’s the category?” he asks around a mouthful of burrito.

“That’s gross, man. Didn’t anyone teach you not to talk with your mouth full?”

“You’ve been in my head so you tell me.”

“Touché. Dutch says it’s a Cat. 3; biggest one on record.”

“Bigger than Cragmaul?”

“Yep.”

“Shit,” he says under his breath, actually kind of impressed because Cragmaul had been one big motherfucker that attacked Australia a couple of years back.

“I know, right? Now c’mon,” Miller claps Jacob’s shoulder as his stride picks up pace. “We got a world to save.”

“One monster at a time,” Jacob quips.

\---

There’s a bad storm going on outside, but inside Brawler Sierra it doesn’t matter; they’re a storm all on their own, in their own right.

But so is the Kaiju. Codename: Bruiser really is bigger than Cragmaul had been, bulkier too.

They manage to gut the damn thing with the blades that jut out from Sierra’s knuckles. Bruiser goes down and they think they’ve killed it. Done and done.

They got complacent. Cocky.

But it was only the eye of the storm.

“Sierra that thing’s still kicking!” Dutch’s voice comes in over the comm-line.

The warning came too late because then a break in the surface, Bruiser lunging at them with its teeth bared and guts hanging out, spilling Kaiju Blue into the water around them. Before Jacob can lift his left arm to strike, its jaw clamps down on Sierra’s arm and _tears_ it off, chucking it away.

The electrical feedback is unbearable and Jacob can’t move.

Miller manages to land a good hit on Bruiser, stuns it long enough for Jacob to shake off the feedback but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re down an arm.

“Seed, we need to—”

But then there’s an _awful_ metallic screech and Jacob stares in horror at the teeth breaching Sierra’s hull, tearing away a good chunk of metal and machinery, exposing them to the storm outside.

And then Miller’s being ripped out of the Conn-Pod and Jacob can feel his pain, smells his own skin burning from the violent feedback of the right-hemisphere’s destruction.

It feels like his brain is on fire, being torn to shreds, because it is and it isn’t.

He can’t sense Miller in their shared headspace anymore.

_Miller’s dead._

A haze of red overcomes him and everything becomes a bit of a blur after that.

\---

Jacob sprawls out on his back on the sand after pulling himself from the battered remains of Sierra.

There’s an overpowering stench of salt and blood and burnt flesh but he’s too exhausted to care. He’s tired – so _fucking_ tired – from having to pilot a Jaeger by himself.

A face swims into view above him though it’s blurry, but he can see the person’s mouth moving, asking him something; Jacob can’t hear it, everything sounds like white noise.

All he can hear is Sierra’s system blaring at him, though it’s long since stopped.

_SYSTEM CRITICAL_

There’s nothing, absolutely nothing.

Jacob Seed is hollow.

\---

Jacob spends months in medical, going through test after test, evaluation after evaluation.

There’s been talk of looking for a new drift partner for him and he just—he can’t. It’s too soon. Hell, Jacob still catches himself looking over to his right, about to say something to Miller but then he remembers Miller is gone.

_Miller’s dead._

They want to find him a new drift partner, but how can Jacob drift with someone when Miller is still in his head?

There and not there.

An impression of a ghost trapped in his brain.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Brawler Sierra was ruined to hell, probably damaged beyond repair and ready to be interred in Oblivion Bay.

It’s all too much; they want to replace his best friend like he wasn’t just ripped away and _why can’t they understand what that’s like_ and they’ll want him to step into a new Jaeger that isn’t Brawler Sierra and he doesn’t think he can do either of those things. So he does the only thing he can think of.

He leaves.

\---

Drifting from place to place all over Alaska and sometimes over into Canada isn’t what he thought he’d be doing with his life, but he needs it, needs the solitude. Jacob wonders if he should try finding his brothers, but then thinks better of it; last he heard John was busy with the law school the Duncans were sending him to and Joseph… well, Joseph had joined one of those damn Kaiju cults a couple years back and Jacob hasn’t spoken to him since.

Knowing Joseph, he probably runs one of the cults by now.

Jacob still thinks it’s the dumbest thing his brother has ever done, but so long as Joseph doesn’t try dragging John into it, Jacob doesn’t care what he does.

So Jacob keeps to himself, doesn’t go looking for his brothers, but he’s in a tailspin of sorts; he needs to be alone but he has to know how things are going, so he always keeps the TV on, wherever he’s staying, and keeps it on one of the many news channels.

Apparently in the year he’s been gone they’ve lost two other Jaegers, including the pilots, the Conn-Pods absolutely ruined. He mostly catches the recaps due to his now erratic sleep pattern, but Jacob’s in a diner when Havoc Horizon goes down.

Everyone in the diner watches it happen on live air.

Havoc Horizon’s pilots are Marshal Fairgrave’s sons if he remembers right; he’s never met them but Jacob’s heard of their kill count and it’s impressive. Not quite the number he and Miller had, but it was pretty close.

On screen they see the left-hemisphere get torn away, see the tiny speck that is surely a pilot go flying and Jacob winces in sympathy and turns back to his coffee; he knows how this is going to end and it’ll be depressing.

Someone gasps and Jacob can’t help but look up and he gapes; Havoc Horizon is still fighting despite being down a pilot and _winning._ Both of its hands come down, one wrapped around the other, and cave the Kaiju’s head in, effectively killing it and the diner erupts into cheers.

But Jacob’ still watching so he sees the moment Havoc Horizon slows to a stop, dead in the water two miles out of San Francisco’s bay and the hope he hadn’t realized growing behind his ribs dies. 

The neural load probably became too much for the remaining pilot, must’ve killed him, but at least he died on his feet.

\---

After Havoc Horizon ends up in Oblivion Bay, more and more Mark-3’s follow suit, pilots dying left and right, dropping like flies.

Jacob stops watching after that, doesn’t turn the TV on anymore.

There’s talk of a wall being built, to replace the PPDC and the Jaegers, and Jacob spends an entire afternoon laughing hysterically and drinking his consciousness away; it’s a fool’s errand. Concrete and steel girders won’t keep the Kaiju out, won’t stop them.

But then rationing gets tighter and he’s almost completely out of money, so Jacob goes to the wall and helps build it even though he knows it won’t do anything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so just a few quick things, i made both Grace and Jess australian in this and since this fic takes place in 2025 i've changed the ages of a few of the characters a bit (i can put actual birth dates and list more characters age changes if anyone is interested).
> 
> Jacob - 1992 (Joseph - 1994, John - 1996)  
> Garrett (& Billy) - 1998, Mary May - 2001
> 
> so in 2025 that would put their ages at about 33 (Jacob) and 27 (Garrett)
> 
> Jaegers:  
> Carmina Tango - Nick and Kim Rye  
> Lucky Duke - Sharky Boshaw and Hurk Drubman  
> Shrike Bombshell - Grace Armstrong and Jess Black

A few years later finds Jacob at some part of the wall in Alaska.

Mostly he does top wall jobs, easiest one to get but it’s dangerous work. People fall off all the time. He prefers top of the wall anyway; sure the better rations help, but it’s the height that makes it worth it for him. It’s like being back in a Jaeger, if only for a moment, the view of the ocean sprawling out towards the horizon.

Despite all the Kaiju Blue polluting and wrecking the ocean’s ecosystem Jacob still finds the deep blue waters to be one of the best things he’s ever seen.

There’s been a couple of times where John has begged him to go and stay with him on the east coast but Jacob has turned him down every time; Jacob may never set foot in another Jaeger for the rest of his life, may have run from the PPDC, but he won’t run from the Pacific.

Besides, it won’t matter where he is when the Kaiju eventually break through the _“Wall of Life,”_ and god what a fucking ironic name it is because it’s the thing that’s going to kill them all. He still can’t believe the UN is foolish enough to think concrete and steel can keep out literal giant monsters that they’ve all seen tear through buildings made of the same stuff as their wall.

Or it could be the fact that they’re all wealthy and can afford to live inland or along the Atlantic and couldn’t give two-shits about all of the poor they’ve condemned to be cannon fodder.

Either way, Jacob won’t head east. Not like he could afford it anyway; top of the wall pays well, but it’s mostly in rations and a decent mattress to sleep on.

He figured he’d die on the wall, either taking a bad step and falling hundreds of feet down to the snow and ice below or due to a Kaiju attack. Figured it was only a matter of time before death came for him.

Instead it was Marshal Fairgrave.

\---

There’s a crowd of workers huddled around the TV in the mess hall, but Jacob doesn’t join them. He can hear just fine from where he sits with his rations. Hooksplitter, Category 4, broke through the coastal wall of Australia and the other workers don’t sound too pleased.

“Why the hell are we even building this thing if a Kaiju can just walk through it like it’s nothing?”

 _Because the UN doesn’t want to spend any money on Jaegers_ Jacob doesn’t say. _If Sierra and the other Mark-3’s hadn’t gone down there wouldn’t be a coastal wall._

Guilt roils in his stomach. 

His biggest failure may not have caused the immediate downfall of the Jaeger Program, but it sure as hell got the ball rolling on its steady decline. Having lost his appetite, Jacob resorts to just pushing his food around with his fork, absently listening to the news reporter interviewing Rangers Armstrong and Black who took Hooksplitter down. Jacob hopes they realize how fucking lucky they are that their Jaeger team had still been around to take it down.

The commotion from the workers suddenly goes silent and Jacob’s shoulders tense.

 _That’s never a good sign_ he thinks to himself.

“Ranger Seed.” 

Jacob recognizes the voice, knows it too well to ever truly forget; stern but not cutting, loud and commanding without actually raising his voice above a reasonable volume. 

“Marshal Fairgrave.” Jacob pushes aside his tray of food as the Marshal sits across from him. 

“Took a while to find you,” Fairgrave comments. “Not too long, considering you stayed in Alaska, but still longer than I would’ve liked.”

Jacob doesn’t say anything, just leans back in his chair.

“Odd choice considering you always hated the cold. Thought for sure you’d have gone back to Georgia,” Fairgrave continues and Jacob doesn’t like the knowing look in the man’s eye, as if he’s got Jacob pegged. “The weather is certainly warmer there, yet you stayed here, just a stone’s throw away from the Pacific. Why is that?”

“Cut the crap and tell me what you want, Marshal. You didn’t come here to play catch up.”

Fairgrave chuckles, raises his hands in mock surrender.

“True enough. I’ve spent the past year activating everything I can get my hands on and moved to Hong Kong. We’ve got an old Jaeger there – a Mark-3 – you might know it; it needs a pilot.”

Pushing down on the small spark of excitement that threatens to engulf him, Jacob tries to look indifferent.

“I guess I’m not your first choice.”

“You are my first choice,” Fairgrave tells him. “I’ve already got the only other Mark-3 pilot to survive the Conn-Pod attacks. Now I just need you.”

Jacob’s brain stutters to a halt at the new information; he’s never heard of anyone else making it through the attacks, but then again, he had mostly stopped paying attention to the news after Havoc Horizon went down.

“So what about it, Seed? It’s the end of the world as we know it; we’re on the brink. Where would you rather die: here, building a lie? Or on your feet, in a Jaeger?”

\---

It’s raining when they reach Hong Kong’s Shatterdome, the wet season having rolled in.

He’s mostly watching the flurry of movement going on around them on the Shatterdome’s deck, grimacing at the Kaiju parts floating in preservative tanks and paying just enough attention to follow the Marshal that he doesn’t notice the blonde woman waiting for them until Fairgrave calls his name and hands him an umbrella.

“This is my daughter and our most promising J-Tech, Mary May Fairgrave. She’s been in charge of the Jaeger Restoration Project with Ranger Garrett Rook.”

“Good to meet you, Ranger Seed,” Mary May says. Jacob takes the hand she holds out, shakes it, but keeps quiet. He’s never really been any good at small talk.

“We’ll give you the tour and then Mary May will show you to your Jaeger.”

\---

If Jacob thought the Shatterdome deck was busy, then he’s clearly forgotten what it’s like to be in a Jaeger bay; it’s nothing but cacophonous whirlwind of movement and noise.

“A Shatterdome this size used to house and launch 30 Jaegers at any given time; now we’re down to four,” Fairgrave informs him as the three of them move down the walkway.

“That bad, huh?”

“Yes, it really is,” Fairgrave tells him solemnly before pointing to the first Jaeger in the bay. “Carmina Tango. Already stationed here in Hong Kong when the Shatterdomes started closing down. She’s piloted by Nick and Kim Rye; they’ve successfully defended Hong Kong port six times.”

“Impressive,” Jacob comments as they walk past.

“Lucky Duke, a heavy hitter with shoulder and chest mounted launchers. Those two are Hurk Drubman and Sharky Boshaw; cousins from Montana. They’re good at what they do, but just don’t ask how they graduated from the Jaeger Academy.”

Jacob raises a questioning eyebrow at that. Can’t just say something like that and not explain.

“No one’s all that sure how they managed to graduate,” Mary May whispers to him. “They’re good men, but they’re not exactly the brightest.”

That doesn’t really explain much, but he’s not going to push it.

As they approach the final Jaeger Jacob can hear a dog barking and then it comes bounding out from around the Jaeger’s foot, one woman trailing after it, the other following along even further back.

“Boomer, come here,” Mary May calls out and the dog makes a beeline for her.

“If you’re looking for Garrett, he stopped by earlier but left his dog,” the older looking woman tells the Marshal with a thick Australian accent.

“Seed, this is Grace Armstrong and over there hiding in the shadows is Jess Black. They’re Shrike Bombshell’s pilots and they’ll be running point. First and last Mark-5 the world will ever see.”

“Running point on what?” Jacob asks, ignoring the glare Jess Black is directing at him.

When he’s told the plan is to drop a bomb on the Breach, Jacob is more than confused by it; they’ve tried doing that before, multiple times, but it always bounced back. It never worked before so why should it now?

\---

“I thought you were going to show me my Jaeger.”

“I was, but Garrett was supposed to be there for it as well, but since he’s decided to disappear into thin air, that’s going to have to wait until I find him,” Mary May tells him as she leads him to his bunk, Boomer trotting alongside Jacob. “Feel free to look around the rest of the ‘dome after you’ve settled in. Mess hall is open 24/7, but they serve dinner from 17:00 to 20:00.”

Jacob gives her a nod when she looks back at him to see if he’s been paying attention. They come to a stop in front of what Jacob assumes will be his bunk; Serial Number: 20133.

“Any questions before I go?” Mary May asks as she hands him what he assumes is the keycard to the door.

“He do this often, this Garrett guy?”

For whatever reason that seems to be the only thing coming to mind right now, his curiosity about this Ranger Garrett Rook that has yet to make an appearance coming to the forefront of his thoughts. So far the only things he knows about the guy Jacob can count on one hand.

What Jacob knows about Garrett Rook: One, he has a dog. Two, he’s the other lead on the Restoration Program. Three, there’s a pretty good chance he’s the other Mark-3 pilot Marshal Fairgrave mentioned.

“What, you mean the disappearing act? Not usually, no.” Her eyes look up at the ceiling, obviously debating on what she will or won’t say next. “Garrett will turn up eventually if I don’t find him first. He never stays away too long, not when there's work to be done.”

Then she turns on her heel and heads back the way they came, and it isn’t until he goes to open his door that he realizes the dog – Boomer – is still with him. With a shrug, he goes to open his bunk’s door but doesn’t go in, just stands in the threshold with Boomer next to him. The room is a standard single, just bare bones and honestly it’ll probably continue to look like that even after time has passed. 

It’s not like Jacob has a lot of possessions, everything he owns fits in the small duffel bag slung over his shoulder; five years of working wherever he can on the wall hasn’t exactly encouraged him keeping a lot.

The place looks clean, too pristine and _wrong, all wrong,_ and he can’t make himself go in. It isn’t until there’s something damp licking at his fingers that he realizes he was about to spiral over being presented with a _clean room._ Which is a fucking stupid thing to lose it over, but it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.

 _You’re a god damn disgrace, Seed, get your shit together_ Jacob berates himself.

There’s a tug on his jacket and looking down reveals Boomer who yips at him once the dog releases his sleeve. 

_Service dog?_ Jacob wonders idly as he tosses his duffel onto the bed and closes the door; he can’t go in there, not yet. Gotta get his head on straight first. Boomer tugs at his sleeve once more and heads off down the hall, stops when Jacob doesn’t immediately follow, and barks at him.

_No, not quite._

Slipping the keycard into his pocket, Jacob decides to follow the weird dog.

\---

Boomer leads him all over the ‘dome in what Jacob assumes to be a completely nonsensical pattern, because it’s a dog.

They end up at a room filled with preserved Kaiju bits and chalkboards filled to the brim with equations written in illegible chicken scratch handwriting, two eccentric looking science types shouting in each other’s faces. 

Fists will probably start flying in the very near future.

What really gets Jacob’s attention though, is the third man in the room who has been sitting off to the side, openly amused by the argument going on in front of him.

The dog goes right up to the guy, rests his head on the guy’s knee.

“Hey Boomer, where’d you run off to?”

“He was with Armstrong,” Jacob finds himself saying without meaning to, moving closer to him to get a better view of the scientists fighting.

The guy smiles at him and Jacob can’t look away from the green eyes looking back at him.

“Yeah, sounds about right. Thanks for bringing him to me. I’m Garrett by the way,” Garrett introduces himself, holds a hand out to Jacob and he shakes it. There’s an odd sensation that dances along his skin where it touches Garrett’s; if he notices it too, Garrett doesn’t mention it.

“Jacob.”

“Jacob, huh? Sorry I wasn’t part of the meet and greet, but…” The smile slips a bit as Garrett trails off but doesn’t drop completely. The shouts from the scientists seem to snap him out of his thoughts and he lets go of Jacob’s hand, casts a quick glance at them before focusing back on Jacob. “We should probably get out of here before Marvel starts throwing Kaiju intestines.”

Jacob grimaces at the thought. “Yeah, probably.”

“You stop by the Mess yet? Because I’m starving.”

“Nothing like formaldehyde and dead Kaiju to get the appetite going,” Jacob deadpans and Garrett laughs as they head out of the soon to be war zone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao, sorry about leavin this to sit without being updated for months. this chapter was fighting me every step of the way

It isn’t a long walk to the Mess, but it’s nice; it’s the closest Jacob’s gotten to a peaceful silence since before he got in the helicopter with the Marshal. Of course, it’s not really silent, not in a ‘dome. There’s always some sort of background noise, like boots on metal floors, the distant sounds of the Jaeger bay, the quiet hum of machinery.

Hell, he doesn’t think he’s had anything resembling peace and quiet since—

Well, it’s been a long time is the point.

The Mess is surprisingly uncrowded when they get there, no long lines for food to worry about, though he still sticks relatively close to Garrett who seems content to go at his own pace, taking his time choosing what he wants. 

(Jacob has to stifle a laugh that suddenly wells up when Garrett grimaces at the Kaiju-blue colored jello.)

As for Jacob though, he’s almost in shock at how much food there is, far too used to rations from the Wall. Hell there’s even _fresh fruit_ and Jacob can’t really remember the last time he saw an apple that wasn’t almost completely rotten yet being sold for far too much. He doesn’t really know what to take, what he wants to eat; there’s too much variety, no Ration Pack A or Ration Pack B to make the choice easier.

He doesn’t even realize how long he’s been taking until Garrett speaks up.

“You can always come back for more if you’re still hungry, though I’d recommend staying away from the jello at all costs.”

Kind of embarrassed being caught overwhelmed by there being too much food, Jacob just grabs the first few things he sees, as well as a cup of the Kaiju-blue colored jello just to see Garrett’s nose scrunch up in disgust. “Man, I thought you had _taste,_ Jacob. Clearly I was wrong.”

He raises an eyebrow at that as he follows Garrett to an open table by the wall, Boomer trailing behind them. “What could I have possibly done in the past twenty minutes to give you that impression?”

Garrett shrugs and takes the seat leaving his back open to the rest of the room, letting Jacob take the seat against the wall so he has a view of the whole room and all exits. 

“Boomer seems to like you, but now I’m wondering if he’s a bad judge of character,” Garrett says, pointedly looking at the jello.

“Spent five years eating nothing but rations; this is the first time I’ve eaten something sweeter than oatmeal,” Jacob says blandly.

“You poor bastard,” Garrett says with sympathy – half serious, half joking – and pats Jacob’s shoulder. “Remind me to share some of my stash with you later.”

“What, you’ll share with the has-been but you won’t share with me? I thought we were friends,” a thick Australian accent says from off to the side and there’s Jess Black with a tray of food, and Grace Armstrong looking at her partner with a long suffering expression.

Jess sits down next to Garrett but looks at Jacob with cold eyes. “So, Seed – what have you been up to for the past five years? Must’ve been something _really_ important.”

The condescension and spite in her voice is palpable and he can feel his shoulders tensing and his jaw clicking as he grits his teeth. His temper is flaring, but then Boomer rests his head on Jacob’s knee and he can feel the tension starting to drain out of him.

“Construction,” Jacob answers without elaborating, patting Boomer on the head. Glancing down at his still mostly full tray of food, Jacob frowns; he’s lost his appetite, but he hates the thought of wasting food – especially _good_ food. 

As he’s debating on whether or not he should save the food for later, Garrett speaks up before Jess takes the chance to start trying to agitate Jacob again.

“Hate to leave so soon, but I should probably show Jacob our Jaeger,” Garrett says, picking up his own tray of food and heading towards the exit.

Jacob doesn’t waste any time and follows after him, tray in hand and Boomer trotting alongside him with a wagging tail. When he glances back at the table to a fuming Jess, Grace catches his eye with an apologetic frown.

Jacob just nods his head in acknowledgment.

\---

They make an odd trio, up on the catwalks in the Jaeger bay; the two of them, heavily scarred on mirrored sides and a napping dog between them.

Garrett points to a Jaeger, dead ahead of them, and Jacob can feel his breath catch.

He recognizes it – parts of it anyway – as Sierra, but mixed in with another Jaeger.

“There wasn’t enough pieces to completely reconstruct Sierra – not enough funding either – but we were able to combine what was left of her with Havoc,” Garrett explains. Jacob glances at him, can see the bright sparks from the welders being reflected in Garrett’s eyes despite the distance from here to there. He can see the pride in his eyes, the way his mouth tugs up slightly in a smile; it makes his own twitch at the corners. “Of course, to save everyone from being confused on what to call her now, she’s been renamed as Blackthorn Nova.”

“When do we test sync?” Jacob asks, poking at his leftover food. His appetite hasn’t come back.

“After the trials for compatibility.”

Jacob’s brow furrows and his mouth pulls down into a slight frown. “I thought us being a team was a done deal. Fairgrave seemed to think so anyway.”

Garrett lets out a quiet huff, a half-grin on his face. “Pretty much, but the compatibility trials are just a formality; can’t have the cadets getting in a twist over what they’ll assume is favoritism.”

Jacob grunts, feeding his scraps to Boomer, who happily scarfs it all down. “If they assume it’s favoritism, then they’re probably not ready to get in a Jaeger anyway.”

Garrett chuckles at that, lightly swatting at Jacob’s arm in an attempt to keep him from spoiling Boomer too much. “Half of them I already know neither of us will be compatible with, the other half are too cocky.”

_Being cocky gets people killed._

It’s a lesson Jacob learned the hard way.

Sure, confidence is necessary when piloting – can’t be second-guessing everything or hesitate – but arrogance…

Arrogance has no place here. There’s too much at stake to allow arrogance onto the field.

They sit there, up on the catwalks with Boomer curled up between them, for a little while longer in a comfortable quiet as the bay below them continues to move and change endlessly.

\---

This time around, Jacob is able to get into his bunk without spiraling into a panic.

Maybe it’s because Boomer is still following him around; he’d parted ways with Garrett at the elevator, something about having to go see Mary May and to _‘please take care of my dog in the very likely event Mary May strangles me to death.’_

Or maybe it’s because of the exhaustion weighing him down, making his mind too tired to freak out on him.

Without even bothering to at least take off his boots, Jacob falls face first onto his bed, which is by far the nicest one he’s had in _years,_ and god, how pathetic is that?

How pathetic is it that he let himself be willingly dragged back into this after spending years trying to keep far away from it? Hell, even when he was trying to distance himself, he was never able to go far. Never able to leave the Pacific Rim, unable to bring himself to leave Alaska even though he fucking _hates_ the cold.

By the time he finally drags himself out of his own thoughts and notices Boomer has curled up by his side, Jacob isn’t all that shocked to find out he’s been lying there for hours even though it’s only felt like seconds.

With a heavy sigh, Jacob shoves himself out of bed. He’s not going to be able to sleep tonight.

Boomer is up like a shot and over by the door before Jacob, the dog’s tail wagging excitedly, scratching and whining at the door until Jacob opens it.

This time, Jacob doesn’t hesitate, just follows Boomer out of the room and to wherever the dog leads him.


End file.
